weird pokemon anime things (archive/permanent version)

so if youve not seen, i made a series of several bulletins detailing weird, illogical, usually just cartoony details i noticed in the pokemon anime, and i wanted to make them more permanent than bulletins, so here we are i guess. for the foreseeable future (as of writing this, 9/27/22) i will continue to make bulletins with updates as i continue, but this will be updated as well:

- pikachu is legitimately interrogated for alleged crimes. in journeys (masters? i think?) he's falsely accused of theft and the detective tries to interrogate him
- mongoose?? in the indigo league series, the main trio and team rocket fight a gastly, who turns into a mongoose to combat jessie's ekans. how do they know what a mongoose is?
- that one banned porygon episode's plot was entirely centered around said main characters going into a computer to stop team rocket from stealing pokemon from the pcs, which in action is the weirdest thing to logically wrap my head around
- how is lana strong enough to fish up humans barely breaking a sweat? in journeys she just hoists goh out of the water with a fishing rod, so how does she hold him up with one hand and not struggle?
- santa is a canonical character in the pokemon universe. he also has a telepathic lapras. wha t.
- how is anyone not literally dead?? there are so many instances of characters who should be breaking bones at the very least and theyre totally okay, but the one time a character does break her arm, its so mundane.
- a dude got away with literal murder in one of the movies. he just straight up exploded a car with a couple and their baby for informatioN-
- one episode got banned in america for a character having a gun, yet ash almost dying via electrocution in the first episode is absolutely fine
- in the same episode where santa becomes canonical, in japanese only, the jynx speak english briefly
- i feel that meowth's reasoning for talking should also be mentioned in this. he literally spied on a classroom for several months just to impress a female meowth he was in love with, and she thought him talking was so weird that she ended up not liking him anyways.
- also how did i neglect to mention the enigma of ash ketchum himself?? this show has been running for almost 30 years, has like a thousand episodes, some spanning over several days or having weeks inbetween, and he is still 10 years old. this child should be 14 or 15 at the very least
-i already mentioned the mongoose last time, but i think the fish should be mentioned too. there was an episode where the st anne sank with the main trios stuck on it, and there were non pokemon fish underwater. does that suggest that other animals exist? why have we never seen them since? i always expected there to be smaller bugs and stuff, but fish? a mongoose?? im still not over this
- ash pretty much dies in the first movie and one of the earlier dubbing lines for misty was almost just going to be her still concerned about her bike, which isnt the weirdest oddity on this list, but it is hilarious
- since indigo league was dubbed by 4kids, a bunch of stuff was censored/changed for localization, like the infamous jelly donuts/onigiri thing. but they still kept in the kabuki performance joke?
- in a similar vein, james and brock are given "protection stickers" to protect them from posession, and the fact that they called talismans protection stickers was so jarring to me it was funny
- in the same episode that santa apparently became a canon element of the pokemon anime context, santa's face is just plastered on the inside of his boot in the localized version, which is somehow evidence enough for misty to be like "ah yes, this is santa's boot, because he's real obviously"
- ash only goes to school during the alola series (as far as im aware, correct me if im wrong), but there are schools in the pokemon universe, so is this just because he's on his pokemon journey?
- mewtwo's included in the pokerap but mew isnt for some reason
- in the indigo league during the eevee brothers episode, the vaporeon guy said something about losing a trainer qualification for losing an eevee? what trainer qualifications??
- there are at least two celebi, one of them being shiny, so that explains how they know what a shiny celebi looks like, but what about the other legendaries? and what about the other alternate color pokemon who arent shiny? i need explanationS-
- a magician wants to hold a magic act in las vegas, but las vegas probably doesnt exist, and if it does, the closest thing theyve got to america is unova, so that suggests that unova just happens to have an exact pokemon copy of las vegas if it does
- same episode as the last (im mostly just writing these as i watch through), a carnival runner literally tries to blow up a bunch of exeggutor??
- i did some digging and found more examples of several legendaries existing, some being shiny (ex. a shiny rayquaza and the whole legendary beast trio) but where did they even come from?? i thought only one existed, so are they clones? legendaries cant breed, so did several of them just spontaneously come into being? are they from alternate dimensions brought through to the main one by palkia?? i could ramble on about this forever heLP-
- are pokemon classified in the same mammal/avian/reptile sort that real animals are? because every pokemon has eggs of questionable origin (seriously, not even pokemon breeders or researchers know, they just find the eggs and they eventually hatch lmao) and therefore are not mammals by our standards, but you cannot look at a meowth or a growlithe and tell me thats a lizarD-
- i'm still very confused about the logistics of all of the nurse joys and officer jennys, im not even going to ask all of the unanswerable questions this time
- in the first jigglypuff episode team rocket said they got bored of their motto and just started singing about themselves instead. just imagine if every episode was like that
- speaking of jigglypuff, how did it get a marker in the first place?
- i love that team rocket tried to record jigglypuff's singing and only got their own snores, meaning their va's were probably sat in a room just making snoring noises for a good minute or so
- do some pokemon already just perfectly understand human language? how did they collectively learn how to do that? in the episode im watching as i write, misty makes a promise to jigglypuff, who already know what she meant, but doesnt understand why everyone falls asleep listening to it, even after having it explained. plus, some pokemon need human speech to be translated, by pikachu notably, so how does pikchu know and the other pokemon dont?
- also instead of fossilizing, some fossil pokemon have just been sleeping in an underground cave for thousands, potentially millions of years
- jessie and james almost got away with smuggling pokemon in a truck, and then only got stopped by james neglecting to watch the road and getting in a car accident
- did at least one of the chanceys at the pokemon center learn to write?? same episode as the last, there were notes written on the back of an x-ray, but was that written by the chancey? it couldnt be nurse joy, she's busy at a different location, so i can only assume chancey can somehow write without any fingers and very very short arms
- a chancey is trying to find replacements for meowth's lost charm, with examples including, but not limited to: a bowl of rice, a venonat, and an entire police station with officer jenny still inside it somehow
- pikachu got an entire apple stuck in his throat, and didnt immediately suffocate
- (medical related stuff tw? no detail, just the basis of the weird thing) the doctor in this hospital is literally threatening team rocket with scalpels and  syringes and stuff, he cut a glass beaker that was flying at him with a scalpel
- there are so many weird things in this one episode i'm counting the entire episode "a chancey operation" as an oddity in itself
- why is specifically only princess vs princess' title card in all caps, i think its been the only one so far
- also its kinda funny that 4kids localized and entire real holiday into just nonspecific princess day
- this episode takes place in march (according to actual hinamatsuri and misty specifying the date in japanese) when holiday hi-jynx specifcally takes place on christmas, so what time void are the characters stuck in for time to pass and nobody to age except apparently kukui and burnet's babY-
- the first things the main trio sees upon walking into the biggest mansion theyve ever seen are two coffins before then almost immediately being screamed at
- james straight up almost died as a child?? what?
- how do jessie and meowth's "invisible" stagehand costumes actually fool james' old butler
- also how long were james' parents stuck in those coffins? did they poke holes in it to breathe or-?
- do- do james' parents have a torture chamber?? in their basement?? they called it a dungeon, i think i should be concerned
- people only acknowledge the pokedexes speaking sometimes, how isnt it loud enough to get people's attention?
- how come ask wants to be a pokemon master so bad, but in the early anime, he has to check his pokedex constantly? i feel like he'd probably have that sort of goal after already having researched and read about a lot of pokemon
- jessie and james' disguises actually manage to work, how does nobody recognize their faces, the most they get is usually just "hm that voice sounds familiar" but nothing further
- jessie and james say in one episode that they have to finish the motto because "their fans expect it" and i cannot tell if theyre breaking the fourth wall as they tend to do or are kidding, because either way is funny
- also yeah if we're supposed to take that seriously, team rocket is self aware
- 55 episodes in and i somehow neglected to mention how bizarre of even a concept the pokerap is, i do not know why it does, but it is hilarious and i am indeed trying to memorize it
- they showed a gun in episode 54 and just didnt change it whatsoever. i guess it was ok because it was never fired? but still, a little weird on 4kids' end
- pikachu is just allowed to train in a police-specific growlithe training class?? i mean cool officer jenny, but why is he just allowed to do this?
- ash scurries up a way with nothing to hold onto somehow
- meowth inhaled gas that raises your voice (so like, helium?? which in that quantity is definitely dangerouS-) and said he sounds, and i quote, "like one of the chipmunks" so that might indicate that alvin and the chipmunks is a canonical element in the pokemon universe
- also in the same scene as the previous, voice changers are apparently so good that team rocket can talk into a megaphone that sounds so realistically like officer jenny and ash that their pokemon are listening to them
- are we supposed to take pikachu's immitations literally? because if so, how does pikachu do that
- how do ash and his friends do literally any of the crazy things that they do. they have stopped the end of humanity several times and are totally fine
- in the new legends arceus movie brock just has a flying car/jet thing?? wHAt
- ash, goh, and dawn see arceus and are just like "woah, thats wild... anyways", same with heatran, uxie, mesprit, and azelf, how are they not freaking out. theyre literally delivered messages from pokegod and are barely fazed
- i do not know how any of the protagonists are able to even get close to heatran without literally dissolving on the spot
- nobody is screaming at the literal volcano monster and i do not know how, i know ive said this before but seriously how is nobody panicking more
- theres a huge mass of water surrounded said volcano monster and it is not boiling because arceus said no apparently
- heatrans at the center of the previously mentioned volcano monster and the protags arent dying, again probably because arceus said so
- so i mentioned in like wpat 1 or 2 how they called the onigiri "jelly donuts" but in episode 55 they actually call them rice balls
- ash though the group was going to be shot from within the bushes, and for some reason no, it was just a guy spying on them in the bushes taking photos of pikachu for some reason
- jessie and james pretend to be an old couple and straight up guilt trip the photographer kid by asking for one last photo of pikachu before they die
- also he had like a whole magical girl transformation just for his camera being set up